


Which Witch

by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf, TheCarrot



Series: Elementals [3]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Elemental Magic, Ezekiel Jones Backstory, Gen, Injury, Minor Original Character(s), Monsters, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 10:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf/pseuds/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCarrot/pseuds/TheCarrot
Summary: Ezekiel is the Fire and the heat of the Australian desert in the middle of the day. Fire that belies the brightness from the rays of the sun.





	Which Witch

_And I’ve had enough, it’s obvious_  
_And I’m getting tired of crawling all the way_  
_I’m not beat up by this yet_  
_You can’t tell me to regret_  
_Been in the dark since the day we met_  
_Fire help me to forget_  
—Florence + The Machine, “Which Witch.”

 

Ezekiel is the Fire and the heat of the Australian desert in the middle of the day. Fire that belies the brightness from the rays of the sun. He is the feel of burning grit under your feet and the poison that lurks in the corner of your vision just lying in wait. Ezekiel is a snap of fingers to call forth the flame that begins merely as a small ember, then, in the midst of a burning warehouse, he becomes an inferno. He rages. The anger inside his bones, feelings of loneliness and desperation destroy everything in his path as he limps away from the burning wreckage and a government who used him. Ezekiel seals shut his wound with a small snap and disappears into the smoke. Then, just like a Banksia, he blossoms into a flame that is fueled by the passion of his heart.

 

Ezekiel doesn’t start with flames.

He’s young.

Very young.

On a Tuesday morning after a particularly brutal night, he uses the heat for the first time. He makes the place he’s been dropped off at so unbearably uncomfortable for the rest of the occupants that they need to escape elsewhere lest they find themselves cooked alive. Ezekiel is left to cower and heal in peace inside a closet, surrounded by a fog of humidity so thick and steamy the outside Australian weather seems cool.

After that first night whenever the two adults supposed to be looking after him try to come home, they end up failing, pressed back by the inability to breathe within their own flat. Then, when Ezekiel does run, they don’t care. They’re just happy the heat is gone, disappeared right along with the little bastard they had been lumped with.

The authorities never do end up putting two and two together.

And so Ezekiel runs and never stops.

He’s twelve and trying not to freeze as the cold desert night sets in around him and the other homeless children, trying to scrape up whatever they can to live.

He’s twelve and a half and concentrating so hard on melting the wires on a grocery store’s CCTV that he accidentally causes a heat wave to roll on in and encompass the entirety of Sydney for two days.

He’s thirteen and using the heat, on purpose this time, to screw with the sensors in museums and art galleries, making their thermal imaging completely useless as he slinks his way in to steal once-impossible targets, taking his first steps on forging himself anew.

It’s kind of fun, he thinks sometimes, just sitting in the air vents of a museum and watching the security freak out as they get readings that are impossible but still happening, with no visible malfunction. He doesn’t always plan on stealing things, he just likes watching the police squirm. It’s almost like payback, Ezekiel thinks. A bit of tit for tat for all the times the authorities looked over him entirely, unhelpful and useless. Reimbursement for all the times they bought into the “kids are just clumsy” line and the “he’s just being dramatic” and the “he’s just a foster kid.”

Just.

Then, in the middle of a frigid Russian winter, when he’s almost fifteen, that’s when the fire comes.

Ezekiel has been on the run from at least two international police forces for the past week and several more local ones, and he’s been running through snow-laden streets and frozen forests that he doubts that he’s ever going to be able to feel his fingertips again, forget about his toes and ears and the tip of his nose. It’s as he’s cornered in a sleazy motel, praying for any kind of exit, any pathway out, that the tips of his fingers begin to spark.

Flames lick at his heels as the motel burns down around him, and Ezekiel makes his way out into the darkness. His jacket is gone, and his jumper is ripped, but the frigid air doesn’t even touch him, and snow evaporates into steam when it lands on his skin.

After that night, he never registers the cold again.

At least, not until two years later when, in the middle of January, he lays bleeding in the middle of a warehouse on his last mission with MI6. There’s a piece of rebar jutting out of his stomach and Ezekiel can only grit his teeth as he is surrounded by the burning wreckage and the charred remains of most of his teammates.

With their human bullets, manmade weaponry, none of them had ever stood a chance.

They had no idea who or what they had been chasing, and in the end, it hadn’t mattered a bit. The animal—no, the monster—is round, like a thick glob of oil, iridescent and dark as it crashes around in jerky movements towards the only other surviving person, Agent Ryan Younger.

Several metres away from him, Ryan is crawling as best he can towards the exit as the mass slinks towards him. Ezekiel doesn’t even hesitate then, reaching out with a shaking hand, calling the fire to him and sending up a wave of flame between the monster and the other man. He can’t hold it for long, but it’s enough to make the creature recoil in pain, disoriented, and retreat for a second as it heals.

_“Run, you idiot!”_

Only now, instead of fleeing, Younger is staring at Ezekiel with terror as well, his gaze flicking between the monster and the ex-thief. The entire warehouse around them rumbles and shakes as the creature lurches back towards Younger, crashing against the supports and walls. A beam crashes down in front of the exit, blocking the way out.

Ezekiel’s mind races as best it can, considering he’s already seeing spots from blood loss. The creature looks like it’s made of oil, but it doesn’t burn like oil, though fire does seem to hurt it, at least a little. So he pushes all the heat he can muster into the metal beams, the falling supports, until they burn red-hot. When they fall onto the creature, it makes no noise, but it writhes and shudders all over, smoke rising out of its mass.

Younger pulls his sidearm, fumbles another clip in, and starts firing, as if it will do any good; the bullets thud into the mass of the creature but only get absorbed into it. As the creature writhes and tries to squirm away from the scalding metal, Ezekiel finally manages to get his feet under him again and staggers towards Younger, both hands clasped over his bleeding side.

The bullet lodges into his shoulder, below his collarbone.

Ezekiel gasps in shock, falling to his knees; the impact reverberates through his whole body, freezing him up with agony.

The warehouse begins to collapse as the monster knocks down another support, writhing in pain. Fire begins to spread as something flammable comes in contact with the hot metal.

Ezekiel does his best to get back up, but he can hardly move anything now, gasping and shaking. He looks down and sees the blood pouring out of his shoulder and side, turning the entire side of his body into a gory red mess.

“What—what—?” he stutters, looking up at Younger; all he can see is the raw terror in the other man’s eyes, his sidearm leveled directly at Ezekiel, taking away any chance of the bullet in his shoulder being a ricochet. He wonders if the agent sees any difference between Ezekiel and the monster.

He doesn’t think so.

The loud groaning of metal finally being stressed too hard sounds from above them, and Ezekiel barely has time to cover his head with both arms as part of the ceiling caves in.

Younger’s screams will haunt Ezekiel’s nightmares for years to come. Especially with the way they just…stop.

Gasping through the pain that seems to be splitting apart every last nerve inside him with a dull knife, Ezekiel falls to his side and reaches a hand out towards the fire that’s starting to consume the rest of the warehouse, licking up old crates and boxes and abandoned junk. The flames slide towards him, curl up his hand and arm; with his free hand, he balls up his tie and shoves it between his teeth, biting down as hard as he can as he presses the fire to his shoulder.

The pain is unlike anything he’s ever felt, and he screams until his voice breaks as melted metal drips out of him and the wound sears shut. He knows he’s probably done more damage to himself this way, but between that and bleeding to death, he knows the better option. Once his shoulder is burnt shut, he has to do the same to his side, yanking out the rebar.

And that does make him pass out.

When he comes to again, he sees the monster, twisting and writhing as it tries to free itself from the pieces of burning debris that have impaled it all over. Calling strength from someplace he didn’t even know he had, Ezekiel calls to the flame, pushing it towards the monster, fencing it away until it rolls to the edge of the waterfront and right on over into the dark ocean.

The warehouse continues to burn around him, and Ezekiel lets himself collapse, finally giving in to the black spots that swarm his vision.

When wakes up again, the warehouse is only a smouldering blackened ruin around him, and he’s covered in a blanket of soot and ash. But his shoulder isn’t bleeding, neither is his side, and he can breathe again. He pushes himself up and disappears into the darkness.

 

“I can’t freeze it very well, can’t make it boil, but I can move it. I can drag something up that’s being hauled to the bottom.”

Ezekiel watches Jacob control the water and smirks.

 

“It’s the wind. It’s always been the wind and the math.”

The thief curses under his breath as his head throbs with every other heartbeat, but he’s smiling nonetheless.

 

Only, by the time the headache finally fades a week later, Ezekiel’s completely forgotten to let the other two know about his own little fiery talent.

He’s in the kitchen making a pot of tea when the thought hits him, and…. 

Oh. Huh…well, damn.

 

It would help, Jacob thinks, if past Librarians left some goddamn warnings about things like the fact that there was a _giant fucking monster in the Hall of Obelisks._

Whatever the hell it is, it’s huge, the size of a Panzer tank, except it looks like a giant mass of oil. He thinks of that old film, _The Blob,_ with the slime that absorbed everything it came in contact with, and decides that this is a whole lot worse.

_“Ezekiel, get out of the way!”_

He peers around from behind the pillar he’d yanked Cassandra behind to see none other than Ezekiel damn Jones walking straight forward, directly towards it, without hesitation or fear, even as Eve and Flynn both shout at him to move. All at once, he feels cold everywhere, as if he’s just jumped down into a bath of dry ice.

Cassandra screams, a wordless wail of terror, writhing against his grip, her sharp nails gouging into his arms, but he holds tighter, keeping her away as the monster lurches forward.

Ezekiel doesn’t even flinch, and a smirk curves his face as he raises one hand and snaps his fingers…

…and a wall of flame erupts between him and the monster, surrounding it on all sides. Jacob immediately drops down to his knees, yanking Cassandra down with him. The fire is at least ten feet high, so hot it’s entirely blue and white at the tips, like a blowtorch flame. The heat is intense. Beyond intense. Jacob almost can’t breathe through it.

A horrible screeching sound reverberates off the walls, and the hands on his arms stop clawing to be free, going instead to cover her ears. It feels like someone scraping a knife along a chalkboard on the inside of his skull, a sound that almost has weight to it.

Ezekiel doesn’t step back, however, even though he’s close enough to be cooked alive from the heat. Instead, the Australian extends both arms, moving his hands out in front of him; the fire follows the movement of his hands, like a maestro conducting an orchestra.

Thick, grease-like blackness oozes off the creature in clumps, sizzling and bubbling away into ugly smears on the floor, acrid smoke rising from it. And the more of it gets burned away, the more they can see what’s underneath, flashes of stark white beneath the mass. That horrible _sound_ scrapes through the air again as it writhes and twists in agony, turning towards the human responsible for its pain.

“Ezekiel!” Cassandra wails, clawing at Jacob’s arms again, hard enough to draw blood, but he keeps his grip firm, refusing to let her back into the monster’s line of sight.

It’s a moot point, however, because not even her scream can pull the monster’s attention away from the thief now.

Another flick of the wrist, and fire leaps to follow the motion, robing the creature in flame. Ezekiel smirks widely as it curls in on itself, the last of the black mess burning away. And as it does, a white skeleton, tall enough to fill the room without even standing.

Across the room, brown eyes glow like the embers of a dying fire, and Jacob can hardly breathe for the heat now, the air feels so thick and hot, like he’s trying to inhale something more viscous than air, but he’s not drowning. Far from it. In his hold, Cassandra is screaming for the wind, and Jacob finally has the presence of mind to call water to him as well.

That is a moot point as well. Because before he can call up the ice shards he’s at last perfected, Ezekiel shifts his stance and moves his hands in that elegant way again, and the skeleton begins to burn. It doesn’t catch fire as the oily darkness had, but the bones begin to blacken and crack, smoke billowing as it comes apart, splintering into pieces that crumble away into ashes.

The fire consumes the skeleton, bit by bit, joint by joint.

Ezekiel doesn’t flinch as it collapses into ash and burning chunks of charred ruin.

And it isn’t until the last bone breaks apart that Jacob’s adrenalin-addled brain finally makes the connection that Ezekiel is the one controlling the fire.

 

“What the hell was that thing?!” Cassandra shrieks, staring at Ezekiel with wide eyes.

“A Gashadokuro.”

Five sets of incredulous eyes turn towards him, and he cocks his head to the side. He can feel the fire burning low in his gut settle into something he’s never felt before. A new ease, a calmness. It relaxes him, soothes something in him he hadn’t ever realised was aching. “Well, I mean, it was a Gashadokuro anyways. The bloke who tried to seal it up buggered it all up and it ended up as…well, that.”

Jenkins is frowning that frown he usually saves for when Eve and Jacob bring a hoard of bad guys into the Annex. “There is no way that any binding spell should have had that kind of effect—”

“Yeah, well, he fucked it up somehow.” Ezekiel shrugs. “Instead of turning the whole skeleton into nothing, it just compressed it into that oily shite. And that is the wonderful backlash of magic at work, kids, and why you should never try to do any magical experiments without adult supervision.”

“How long have you been chasing that thing?” Jacob asks, his eyes oddly dangerous as he gazes at the burning wreck of the monster.

Ezekiel doesn’t want to think about what it means that Jacob won’t look at him. “A while. I tossed it in the ocean a few years ago, but when I went back to finish it, it was gone.”

“Wait a minute, you’re the reason I had to scuba dive to get that thing?!” Flynn nearly shrieks, casting an affronted look his way.

“I didn’t know you knew how to scuba dive,” Eve remarks.

“Well, at first, I didn’t know how to kill the bloody thing. So I just left it there and got the bleeding hell out of there before I got caught,” he adds flippantly, trying not to think of the small, burning lance of pain in his shoulder and the sudden, broken stop of Younger’s screams. “Yadda, yadda, became a Librarian, research, fire kill, easy-peasy, one and done.”

Jacob finally looks at him, and for a moment, his face is almost blank but for a twitching in the corner of his mouth. Finally, his expression cracks into a grin, and he reaches out to clap Ezekiel on the shoulder. “You smartass.”

 

Between the three of them, they make quite a set—Water, Wind, and Fire.

Quite a set indeed.


End file.
